Zach’s Theological Musings

  Note that I posted a new page of online sermon recommendations from my dad.

  One preacher on that list is Paul Washer. Washer is an American missionary to Peru, director of HeartCry Missionary Society, and itinerant preacher when back in the USA. Because of the nature of Washer’s ministry you may not find from him a verse-by-verse exposition through books of the Bible. While I praise God for granting Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones 13 years before he died to make it 4/5 of the way through Romans with his church this way, Washer’s role as intinerant preacher also carries certain advantages. In particular consider: if you had only one hour, or two hours, or one hour per night for a week, what would be the most important, crucial, urgent message to bring to American “evangelical” Christians? Washer hits the nail on the head better than anyone I’ve heard.

  Washer frequently likes to ask the question, “When is the last time you wept over your own sin?” My honest answer (though I may wish my answer was different): probably the last time I listened to a Paul Washer sermon.

Audio:

1. Selection of Washer sermons available through HeartCry missionary society.
2. Many more Washer sermons available at SermonAudio.com.

Video:

1. Ten Indictments Against the Modern “Church”.
2. Video regarding persecution coming to America, “counting the cost” of following Jesus, and (what Josef Tson would call) “Stolen Martyrdom” — that when you are persecuted your persecutors will probably not hurl against you accusations about the true nature of what they don’t like about you, but rather will simply hurl accusations designed to you hurt you most deeply and do the most damage (4 min): http://media.sermonindex.net/17/SID17663.wmv.
3. A so-called “shocking message” delivered to youth evangelism conference in 2002. Apparently this is where Washer began to be known as a preacher that people either loved or hated. Basically, it is a “classic” Washer message on the true gospel, true vs. false assurance of salvation, and a call to examine yourself. I would say the “shocking” part is that perfectly clear, oft-repeated teachings of Scripture are so neglected that when someone simply speaks out to affirm them it is considered “shocking” (59 min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuabITeO4l8.
4. “Whosoever will may come. What will it cost you to become a Christian? Absolutely everything. Absolutely everything. What does God promise you? Eternal life, and a cross. What is it worth? All the value that is God. All the value that is God.” (1 min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLIJM4B6_ZM&feature=related.

  How many cases have you heard of church discipline being exercised in modern times? Now, in contrast how often do you hear “counseling” offered as the solution to Christian “struggles”, and how much psychologizing do you hear taught in Christian circles?

  These days the so-called Christian life isn’t about engaging in full-fledged war against indwelling sin. It is about realizing and actualizing the “wonderful plan” that God has for your life, which gosh-darnit you just need to follow these steps and stop missing out on.

  Perhaps that is one reason why Christ isn’t central either. Even the very name God chose for His Son—Jesus—was given because, “He will save his people from their sins.” Not just from the consequences of their sins, but from their sins! If salvation and the gospel are a thing we accepted in the past and then move on from to searching out the “abundant Christian life” down other paths, then the primacy of ongoing battle against sin, and hence the centrality of Jesus, gets sidelined.

  Ephesians 6:2:

“Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

  Deuteronomy 5:16:

Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

  Deuteronomy 27:16:

‘Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’

  Note, in particular, that these promises and threats are issued within the context of the covenant community of God’s people. I find strikingly recurrent “quality of life” patterns in two distinct classes of Christians whom I know well enough to discern such things in.

  Camp A are those who speak with a certain bitterness, resentment, and/or ingratitude towards their parents—that is, if they speak of them at all; you can be friends with someone in this camp for several years and never hear them mention their parents because they prefer not to talk (or think) about them. People I know in “Camp A” generally have most or all of the following traits in their life:

1. Recurring attempts or thoughts of suicide, or at least a general “wish I was dead” mental/emotional state. Ongoing (not just temporary) depression.
2. Often there are “replacement parental figures” who take the place in the person’s affections that rightfully belongs to the parents who bore and raised them. (Yes, issues of adoption and such may complicate things here. But probably the best response, in the spirit of God’s command, is simply that a special, irreplaceable place of honor should be given in your heart to EACH of the people who played a parental role in your life: biological parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, AND spiritual parents, not just one or the other.)
3. Continual, seemingly unresolvable conflict and strife in certain (generally family) relationships. This is significantly more intense than the occasional, resolvable conflicts that those in “Camp B” face.
4. Continual, seemingly unconquerable sin, temptation, and suffering issues. Again, while those in “Camp B” obviously also face sin, temptation, and suffering, there is a marked distinction in the way that these issues seem to dominate the lives of people in “Camp A”.

  Camp B are those from whom you hear a generous, honoring attitude towards parents. Their parents certainly weren’t perfect; people I know in this camp include children from divorced and unbelieving households. Nevertheless, those in “Camp B” long for any faults and sins their parents might have to be made whole in Christ more than they long for “justice” to be served. They don’t make much of any wrongs they may have suffered from their parents, but rather embrace their parents with the unrelenting love and forgiveness that they themselves have received in Christ. As mentioned above, while those in “Camp B” certainly have bouts of depression, conflict and strife, and while they certainly face even prolonged temptation and suffering issues, these things do not dominate their spiritual joy and quality of life in Christ in the way that those in “Camp A” are dominated.

  In summary, the clearest distinction I can make is that the lives of those in “Camp B” exude a certain powerful shalom (peace) that is absent from “Camp A”.

  These distinctions can also be made within different periods of the life of a single individual. I can personally testify to periods of parental-dishonor in my heart during which I suffered the devoid-of-peace curses described above even when times were “good”, and periods of parental-honor in my heart during which I experienced persevering shalom even when times were “bad”.

  Yes, of course I know what pagan pop-psychology would say: “These `Camp A’ people were abused and neglected by their parents, so it is no wonder if they are screwed up and bitter about it.” But far more than even any experiential evidence I could offer, I would remind brothers and sisters in Christ to accept the diagnosis direct from God’s word: You may have suffered the most horrifically unspeakable things at the hands of, or under the closed eyes of, your parents, but the spiritual havoc you wreak in your own life, closing doors to blessing and opening doors to cursedness, by failing to honor your parents from the heart as God wants you to, is worse that what anyone else did do, or could do, to you!

  Thus this post is not merely meant as a descriptive analysis, but rather a plea: Receive the blessing that God has promised! There is a level of peace and joy in life available far beyond what you have experienced even as a professing Christian. I am not saying that there is a state of having something “more than Christ” in the Christian life. Rather, I am saying that “Camp B” is part and parcel of the normal Christian life, but that by choosing to live in violation of God’s command (Camp A) you have blocked yourself from fully experiencing the true blessed life in Christ. Repent! And receive the blessing! From someone who has spent time in both camps, I say PLEASE put away ALL bitterness and seek a heart of genuine honor toward your parents, and see if God isn’t faithful to His promise!!!!

  For more on this, see the very first entry posted to this blog: Honor Your Parents.

  Excerpt from Jonathan Edwards, “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption”:

“The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ has purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world.

The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the ‘the river of the water of life’ that runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the paradise of God.’ The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.”

HT: Nick R.

“God Loves You and Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life”?

* A Christian missionary to North Africa is on furlough visiting his home in America. While backing his car out of the driveway he accidentally runs over his own son and kills him.

* A famous Christian singer adopts three children from China and starts a charity organization to help others adopt both domestically and from abroad. His eldest son accidentally hits the youngest adopted daughter in the driveway and she dies.

* A Christian woman leaves America to bring a message of God’s love to the Middle East. One morning as she opens the very clinic where she has given herself to serve those in need, she is fatally shot at close range in the head.

* A man leaves Islam to follow Christ, is ostracized by his family and community, and flees to a another country where he continues spreading the gospel. While in “exile” in this second country, a bomb set outside his house explodes just as he is running past it and his body is blasted to pieces.

* Countless professing Christians in the “free world” have (just like the rest of society) their houses foreclosed, earthly investments plummet in value, loved ones die of cancer, paralyzing car accidents, unrelenting emotional/relational/spiritual struggles, prolonged unemployment, spouses leave them, etc., etc.

* Countless Christians around the world are thrown in jail, betrayed, tortured, killed, have their churches burnt down, their houses searched, and their reputations slandered.

  Does reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ open the doors to experiencing God’s wonderfully comfortable plan for your earthly life? NO! NO, NO, NO, NO! Reconciliation with God through the blood of Christ *IS* God’s wonderful plan for your life!!!! Jesus is not only the golden key that opens the hidden treasure chest, He is Himself the full content of what is inside!!!!!!! Not promises of good grades or good jobs or good health or good relationships, but JESUS, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief whose triumphal kingdom is in some sense “already” but also “not yet”! That is what (actually whom) you get in the gospel!

  By way of contrast, a statement from a book on (supposedly) evangelizing Muslims in which the author gets the gospel dreadfully WRONG:

  “[F]ollowing Christ should not–—and need not–—bring on persecution and blame from other Muslims. … It is incredibly good news [i.e. the gospel?] to a conscientious Muslim who has put his trust in Christ as Redeemer that he can know that his sins are forgiven, that he will assuredly go to heaven, and that he can have nothing to fear on Judgment Day–—AND STILL be a part of his community [emphasis added]!”

  To which I respond: DOG CRAP! Scholars say the Greek “skubalon”, which appears only in Phil 3:8, derives from the word “dog” together with the word “cast out”, “that which is cast out from a dog”, i.e. feces. (Alternately, some think the etymological meaning is “that which is cast out TO the dogs”, i.e. scraps of rubbish; but in any case I would contend that the two ultimately turn out to be the same thing!) The incredibly good news is that everything you used to think was incredibly good news apart from Christ is in fact dog excrement compared to knowing Him. Your greatest earthly desires—remaining part of your kinship community for a Muslim or living the free and prosperous American Dream for a Westerner—smell like feces to those who have experienced the aroma of life in Jesus Christ. To wedge an imaginary promise of abiding earthly community with non-believers into the gospel as if that were on par with “forgiveness of sins” is nothing short of heresy!

  Does God have a wonderful plan for your life? Yes! Not to spare you from tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, but even better to reveal the all-surpassingly satisfying greatness of His love which is able to sustain you WHILE YOU ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED as sheep all day long (Romans 8:35-36). The abundant life in Christ (John 10:10) is the life of abundant joy amidst abundant trials and abundant earthly sacrifice that JESUS HIMSELF experienced; the abundant life is:

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:10).